The Colombian Strike: A Historical and Political Conversation

Sign up for our email list: ​​​​​ Donate to Mass Peace Action Today: On April 28 of 2021, Colombians organized a massive general strike against the neoliberal regime of President Iván Duque, galvanized around his deeply regressive tax reform. The strike, however, has a longer history. Outraged by the ongoing extrajudicial killings of social leaders, enforced disappearance of peasants, continuous reports of state crimes—named in Colombia with the euphemism of false positives—and the constant intimidation that especially black and indigenous people continue to face in their territories, when seeking to protect them from state-sponsored extractivism, the people took to the streets. Indigenous people’s historical Mingas, black people’s continuous mobilization to force the state to respect their constitutional right to prior consultation, as well as the massive student movement around the MANE (Mesa A